Summary

Amid demand for enacting an Anti-Racism Law to protect rights of
North East people, Rahul Gandhi on Tuesday said the Centre is working
towards giving certain minimum rights and security to people of the
region all over India.
“You should not only be having these rights in places you belong to,
like Meghalaya, Tripura and Assam but in the whole of India,” Gandhi
said as he interacted with tribal leaders in Diphu.
The interaction also saw participants raising the issue of Nido
Taniam’s death after being allegedly beaten up by some shopkeepers in
the national capital some time back.
Acknowledging that there is discrimination against students from
North East, Gandhi said, “We, at the Centre, are working towards giving
certain minimum rights and security to people that one should have in
the whole of India. You should not only be having these rights in the
places you belong to like Meghalaya, Tripura and Assam but in the whole
of India.”
During the interaction, Gandhi talked at length on the issue of
corruption and made a strong pitch for opening up the processes in the
political system as a solution to it.
The Congress vice president reiterated his resolve to replicate the
Primary System of choosing candidates with the collective decision of
party workers in a particular region if the pilot project of holding it
in 15-16 Parliamentary seats this election bore fruit.
“Opposition talks about corruption but the most powerful and
historical instrument against it in form of RTI was given by our
government. What was done in closed doors by bureaucrats can be known by
any common citizen by filing RTI.
“When people talk about corruption it is because only a few people
have power centralised in them. We want to open this decision making
process,” he said.
Gandhi said decision-making is confined to few and at best it is the 4500 MLAs and 800 MPs, who enact all laws.
He noted that there has been a complaint for long that one family or one individual keeps getting tickets.
“This is the situation which you feel bad about…Decision making about
ticket distribution is highly centralised as very few people take
decisions on distribution of tickets…Power is centralised. In future we
will not give one person or one family the ticket but we will ask you to
distribute tickets.
“We are holding primaries. We have held it now in 15-16 places but we
want to take it in all constituencies and this is something, which no
other party is doing…..With this (primaries), all party workers would be
involved in candidate selection and you will feel that it is your
candidate,” Gandhi said.